I’ve noticed a pattern, both from people I’ve spoken to and from many of the blogs and reviews. Everyone who got the box seems to have one item they seem to really like and one they don’t. They all seem to feel quite strongly about their choices–which is fantastic–and of course, they’ve all got different ideas as to why the pieces are good / bad / pointless. Curiously, almost all the pieces in the box manage to be someone’s most / least favourite at least once.
I think this is quite unusual. Given that we’ve worked with different agencies, people and companies, isn’t it odd that all of the items come out with a similar chance of being someone’s most / least favourite? Now, true, the point of Matter is that we bring a pretty clear idea of what we want the whole thing to feel like, but, in the normal course of things, you’d still expect one or two clear winners and one or two obvious turkeys.
Isn’t that normally what happens?
I’ve been asked by a couple of agencies to come in and introduce Matter.
Today, it was the nice people at PHD in London, one of whom, John V Willshire had received his Matter box and kindly invited me to come in and run through what we’d learned so far. As is often the case, people come in and out and I leave the box on the table for everyone to have a rummage through its contents.
I’ve always believed that people’s engagement with objects is universal; that people like to touch and hold real things no matter who they are. Someone commented that this “was probably what the recipients did when they got it”. I think that’s exactly right.
We’re curious to know what’s happened to the Matter boxes in the few days since they were delivered. We’d love to hear from you about what you’ve done with your box and where it is now.You can join the Matterbox group on flickr where you can post a picture and a description of where it is now and what’s happened to the contents.Or you can tell us here…
Welcome to Matter, an experiment in communicating with stuff.
The idea behind Matter is to create a new kind of communications channel around the idea of giving people stuff. It’s an exceedingly simple idea; one that hopefully, everyone will understand, and hopefully many will appreciate.
In a world that seems to be increasingly dominated by digital communications, and where the net effect of those media is to render our experiences as being somewhat remote, the idea is to balance that by providing a way for advertisers and companies to start talking to people by giving them things.
We hope that the sensation of getting a box of good stuff will be familiar and recognisable to anyone, and the prompt to take the time to sit down and sift through the pieces (hence why it’s always delivered on a Saturday morning).
The ambition is that Matter develops into a legitimate communications medium, with its own distinctive values, where agencies would have a clear idea of what would go in a Matter box and recipients would have a good idea of what to expect.
It might seem far-fetched, but maybe Matter might ultimately be seen as an obvious way to give people a real brand-experience by giving them something they can immediately hold and touch. Sure, this will take time, but if digital media continue to dominate even more aspects of our lives, there’s going to be a growing demand for the need to get to grips with things. Matter is a long-term project, that might seem distinctly old-fashioned, but it’s driven by changes in virtual media and what will be a residing human need to experience things in a physical way.
The idea for this blog is to gather together and discuss the various strands of culture and media that inform what Matter is and might be in the future.
It’s all about stuff and why we like to get it into our hands.
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